Many chemical substances are handled in powdered form. Chemicals in powdered form are generally more cost effective than liquids because they have a much longer shelf life than liquids and are less volatile than liquids, making them easier to ship and store. The powdered substances also provide the flexibility of solvating to any desired concentration. As a result, there is a need to measure and manipulate quantities of powdered or particulate substances. This need is present in many areas including the chemical, industrial, medical and pharmaceutical industries where process chemicals, industrial chemicals, medicines and drugs are generally stored in a powdered form. Specific quantities need to be isolated and measured for experimentation, processing and other uses. As a result, several different methods of collecting and measuring particulate substances have been developed.
One such method includes using mechanical vibrations to loosen the particulate substance to such an extent as to give it fluid-like characteristics, the particulate substance is then deposited into a receptacle where it can be isolated and measured. Another method includes using mechanical devices such as an Archimedes screw integrated into a special cap or special canister that has a mechanically operated valve. Yet another method for collecting the particulate substance includes using a vacuum tube system to collect the substance with suction or forced air motion.
These methods are costly to design, implement and operate because they require a great deal of manual preparation and cleaning between uses and are highly subject to the threat of cross contamination and/or the loss of valuable substances. Some of these methods are also unable to collect substances from typical laboratory storage containers. They require the use of =additional specially designed containers to accomplish the collection, which may also require the retooling of existing equipment. These methods are also unable to collect, isolate and measure particulate substances with the level of performance and efficiency, needed in most industries, such as where single aliquots from many different particulate substances are needed. In this case, the loss of particulate substances and the amount of time incurred in cleaning and reloading the equipment does not make these methods cost effective. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, requires specific amounts of a particulate substance to be accurately measured to within a small tolerance, which is made more difficult because each of the many various substances have their own separate cohesive and adhesive physical characteristics. In fact, many of these methods are unable to outperform the typical lab technician collecting and measuring particulate substances manually.